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Female Fertility Festival

There are famous local and nationwide festivals all over Japan all year round, but two of them stick out like a sore peni–… uhm… thumb: the fertility festivals near Nagoya, Aichi.
A year ago I wrote in great lengths (no pun intended!) about the second part of the Honen Matsuri, better known as “That Japanese penis festival!” – just in time for you to visit it, as it is held every year on March 15th, no matter which day of the week it is; it’s a Sunday in 2015, so be prepared to see some additional dicks and chocolate covered bananas there…
Last year I also visited the much less famous first part of the Honen Matsuri, better known as “There is another fertility festival in Nagoya?” – it’s always on the Sunday before March 15th (which is March 8th this year, less than four weeks from now!) and it is all about female fertility, symbolized by an enshrined stone vulva; well, at least on paper it’s all about the vajayjay…

The history of the festival, which is held near Gakuden Station on the Meitetsu Komaki Line, just one stop away from the dick-ish penis festival at Tagatajinjamae, dates back hundreds of years and ties directly into the other festival, making it all about… agriculture. Yes, instead of Thanksgiving, it’s kind of Thankspraying – and since fertility is much easier to understand (and to market!) when it’s symbolized by human genitals instead of a tiny kernel and some dirt…

The Himenomiya Honen Matsuri (as the Female Fertility Festival is really called) loosely translates as Princess’s Shrine Harvest Festival and starts at 9:00 a.m. with a prayer service for good crops, followed by a ceremony blessing the kodomo mikoshi, the portable shrine for children. From 11:00 a.m. on a child procession is leading up to the main event venue, the Oagata Shrine – which is super cute as all the little ones are dressed up and their parents, also dressed up, are walking right beside them, proud as peacocks. This is followed by a car parade from 12 o’clock on and the arrival of several mikoshi, portable shrines, carried by up to two dozen young men, in the afternoon. In addition to that, there are all kinds of entertainment, like an amazing drum troupe and the beautiful flower garden of the adjunct Taikokuebisu Shrine. The Himenomiya Honen Matsuri ends at around 4 p.m. with a mochi nage, in which elevated elderly officials shower the masses below with huge rice cakes the size of an adult’s palm.
While the famous *penis festival* is a rather loud, fleshy… flashy… festival where drunk people from all over the world (yes, tons of foreigners, more than I’ve ever seen anywhere at the same place in Japan!) openly celebrate an otherwise suppressed love for everything phallic, the Himenomiya Honen Matsuri is much more subtle and feels like a real traditional Japanese festival, not like a spectacle for tourists from near and far. The usual festival stalls sell almost no frivolous / quirky food and souvenirs, the noise level barely ever goes up, and each element of the festival is just lovely to observe – the colorful costumes and beautiful mikoshi a feast for the eyes. While the ema (small wooden plaques for wishes or prayers) at the Tagata Shrine come in various very explicit variations, there is only one motif at the Himenomiya Honen Matsuri – and last year it showed breasts, but it shied away from spread legs or bent over bodies. Even the vulva shaped stone doesn’t get much attention and isn’t recognizable as such if you don’t pay much attention.
If you are ever in the Nagoya area in early / mid-March I strongly recommend visiting both festivals, if possible. The Himenomiya Honen Matsuri on the Sunday before March 15th is a busy yet halcyon event for the whole family with only a slight sexual connotation, while the *penis festival* on March 15th of every year is one big sausage fest, a party for everybody old and drunk enough!

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4 Responses

Agricultural societies totally got the fact that their lives depended on two things. Fertility of the soil, (pollination, seeds, fertile soil) and children to help them harvest, plant, and maintain their crops. This, in times before the industrial revolution resulted in these kinds of celebrations around the world, Asia, Europe, the Americas and every other place mankind has inhabited. Now sex is seen pretty much as recreational, and pornographic if in public….it was not always that way…

The Japanese were a lot more relaxed when it comes to sex when they acted like “North Korea 0” – then they opened up to the world and certain traditions went down the drain. Onsen for example were not gender separated and when somebody dusts off the story behind the tanuki statues standing in front of every second hotel / restaurant the non-Japanese media is all over it. The Honen Festival is just the tip… of the iceberg.